So fundamental is electricity, the force that drives Google, iPods and so much else in the Electric Universe by David Bodanisworld, that it seems remarkable the extent to which its existence is assumed.

David Bodanis attempts to challenge this by charting the centuries of discovery that have led to our addiction for a power which not only holds our bodies together but prevents the earth collapsing towards the core of our planet.

Bodanis's eye for the characters who utilised this invisible power produces a compelling, fast-paced read. There is Alan Turing, who helped create what led to the modern computer, but who suffered the torment of being homosexual in 1940s England. Then there is Robert Watson Watt, a tubby civil servant in the 1930s whose desire to escape Slough provided the spark that would see him courted as a saviour of the nation after harnessing electricity to create the radar systems that would protect Britain from Nazi invasion.

Most compelling is Michael Faraday, a working-class Londoner, born in 1791, who discovered electricity could leap through space, a view which contradicted Isaac Newton.